Thorfun

but the WW 48ch decoder is a 24V unit. the blinds are mains voltage so it wouldn't work.

https://shop.loxone.com/enuk/nano-2-relay-tree.html. £95 each. so that'd be £760 for me! 2 x Relay extensions would be £660 which would also leave me with 12 extra relays left over. why would anyone use the nano 2 relays? although the end stop detection would be nice to have rather than having to 'time' it.

yeah. I'm thinking about getting this from AliExpress which will run all our blinds and is cheap. I've asked the seller if it's din rail mountable as if it's not I'm not sure how to convert it to a din rail mounted board. I'm also confused as to what the daughter board does and whether I can scrap it and wire directly to the main board.

thanks. definitely dual switched live. the way I wired the tester up was how the MI stated. I've got 8 blinds.....16 relays.....damn! 😢

external blind terminal blocks.....I bought https://www.wago.com/gb/rail-mount-terminal-blocks/quadruple-deck-rail-mounted-terminal-block/p/2002-4157 for the blinds and here is how I have my blinds tester wired the switch is a rocker switch so raises and lowers the blind. I am presuming that the blind cable brown and black are both live and one makes the motor go forwards and the other in reverse. do I then need 2 x relay connections for each blind? one to take it up and the other to take it down? seems logical but, as usual, I haven't catered for that in my number of relay calculations so I would just like to confirm please

cheers. only issue i can think of with that is how to mount it on a din rail. i was thinking something like this as i could simply mount it on the bottom din rail. only thing i'm not sure on is the Wattage of it. it's status 15W but those DMX relay switches are 12V 1A so that means 12W each, right? therefore if i'm running 3 of them i'd need a 36W PSU at least? is that how it works?

the listing on Amazon states 12VDC. I presume that means I'd need a 12VDC PSU and couldn't power it from the Loxone power supply and backup unit as that's 24VDC?

thanks for the info. I was just looking on AliExpress and found the 8CH DMX relay switch equivalent at half the price of Amazon. looks pretty identical to me. there's even a 16CH one for £40. seems too good to be true, right? but I've bought from AliExpress before and things seem to work as expected so far.

I have a Whitewing 48 channel DMX RGBW dimmer for 24V led strips. currently have 8 channels spare. I did ask Mike from Whitewing and he suggested something like this could be used on one of his dimmer outputs. is that what you mean by a 24V coil mains relay? I don't know what an SSR is but I will Google it tomorrow. problem is I need an additional 18 relays for the house and then whatever the basement needs after that. I was going to leave the 8 channels on the WW 24V dimmer for the basement led strips when they come along so didn't want to use those up if I didn't have to. I could get 3 of those DMX relays I linked from Amazon. that'll cost me less than half the cost of a Loxone relay and give me more relays. I know you bought stuff from China for your setup but I remember you saying that they were noisy and a little unreliable?

on to another question (yes yes, I know, I'm full of them 😉 ). I need another Loxone Relay Extension. but at £330+VAT for 14 relays it's a large cost to swallow at this stage of my build. anyone have any other alternatives I could use to switch mains voltage lights? preferably not something that's going to blow up and that isn't too power hungry or noisy when not in use. would this be suitable?

I did think about this as it's a 36U rack so I have plenty of space. also running the speaker cables to the network rack would allow me to move away from the Loxone audio server in the future should I wish to. I could also put the amp for the cinema in the rack too. thank you so much for that link. I will definitely consider it especially as it's the same price as that cheapo enclosure I found and would be a neater solution I think.

PV inverter is in the loft and feeds down to the CU/batteries in the comms room. I had a long discussion with folk on here about where to site my batteries and, for me, the basement in the comms room was the most obvious position. Again, way too late for me to think about relocating them just to put another Loxone cabinet in when I could find another solution for the Loxone system. I do have 2.5m height to play with but that is from the floor so I could easily fit a LXN-2RE in under the LXN5 should I need it. could probably fit an LXN4 depending on regulations on the unit being a certain height etc. at the moment, it's just funds that are low and I just need to get it working so we can move in.

ok. I think I've made a decision as to what to do with the primary deciding factor being I have very little money left to finish the house! as such I am going to takes @joth's suggestion and purchase something like the 18-way version of this to house the audio server and stereo extensions. then I will need to purchase a new WW mains dimmer and a Loxone relay to finish the circuits of the main house. that will leave me with a potential 11 230V circuits and 8 x 24V LED strips to run the basement. which won't be enough but I can position another relay on the bottom rail which will add 14 relays which will be enough to run the basement. in order to leave that expansion space on the bottom row I will need to run individual RCBOs in the CU rather than a single cable from the CU and house them in the LXN-5. that means more cable from the CU to the LXN-5 but I can live with that and will put it in some trunking. it doesn't leave me with much expansion room tbh but it should be enough to finish the house and then, when/if I ever have any money again, I can see if I want to add an expansion cabinet below to create more space within the enclosures. with that in mind, below is my proposed layout. Relay #4 will not exist for a while and is the space for future expansion of the basement circuits. it's not ideal but it is an inexpensive way of getting it operational. happy to receive feedback.

I think I just have too many circuits, especially when I think about trying to light up the basement so all the termination on the top rail really isn't possible I think! my spreadsheet is currently showing 77 x 230V terminal blocks and 24 x 24V terminal blocks. then with the 11 x 8-way blocks that is a total width of 626.4mm. The din rails are only 550mm wide. and then I haven't even got to the basement circuits yet. I'd also rather keep all the Loxone stuff in the one comms room and it's way too late in the day now to try and start running cables elsewhere. I will go and have a good measure up down there in the comms room and see what I can fit in but it's pretty tight in there with my CU, batteries, LXN cabinet and 800mm x 600mm data cabinet! luckily I have pretty high ceilings so should be able to fit the LXN5 with a.n.other cabinet below whether that's a LXN3 or the LXN-2RE I'm not sure yet. I have the power supply and backup from Loxone for my power requirements which 'should' suffice so don't really need the deep cabinet. in hindsight I'd have made the comms room bigger 🤦‍♂️

we never turned on the ufh on our cement based screed that was poured in May and the tiles were laid in August. (we still haven't turned it on yet as the corex is still down). we have a decoupling mat. I presume that having never turned the ufh on is not a problem as the screed has 3 months of summer to dry out? 🤞

here's a hypothetical potential layout with the expansion. leaves room for a WW mains dimmer, relay extension and a 24V WW dimmer if they're required once I've designed the lighting for the basement.

ok. so now I'm actually thinking about maybe getting the LXN-RE 2 din rail expansion cabinet now. I can then put the audio server on the very bottom with the PSUB above it in the expansion, then that leaves a free din rail in the LXN-5 for basement expansion. that way all the lighting is kept in one place rather than split to an expansion cabinet. it also means not finding space or spending money on a further external cabinet for the audio server. good idea? bad idea? sitting on the fence?

ooh...so FA do a 2 din rail expansion cabinet https://www.futureautomation.co.uk/Product/Details/LXN-RE. I could plan to separate the basement lighting and house that all in the expansion cabinet. just need to make sure I leave enough space below the LXN5 to fit the LXN-RE!

the lack of space is completely my fault as I don't think I'd counted for the basement lighting when I was originally planning the system as that is a todo later job. I'm not convinced that the extra 16 channel dimmer and relay will be enough for the basement. so I might have to end up getting a second panel for the basement lighting. who's f*****g idea was it to build such a big house. 🤣

According to the maths I can't fit the 24V terminal blocks on the top row but maybe when I come to actually fit them I can squeeze them in? I'd already thought about moving the audio server to a separate unit and here's the new cabinet layout to show that with an extra relay extension and extra 16 channel Whitewing dimmer any recommendations for a 'cheap consumer unit enclosure' please?

rofl...I'm such a <expletive deleted> muppet! been planning my cabinet thinking I had 6 x DIN rails. 🤣 ......I have a LXN5 so I only have 5. this is going to be really really really tight as I now have realised I need a further 19 relays/dimmer circuits. 😭

thanks guys. as I work my way through the detailed connections from the relays to the terminal blocks I think I'm going to run out of relays. 😢 I really don't want to fork out for another relay so I might have to leave a few non-essentials out for now and see if I can add them at a later date. but I'm not finished with the design yet so it might still all work out ok! we will see. 🤞

Another quick question please. can I use the digital outputs on the mini server for mains lighting? looks like it from the spec sheet but was wondering if it was ok to do so.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'to balance' on the neutrals but here's the extract from the WW manual it also says so it sounds like I do need to use a single RCBO for all the main dimming circuits. that really buggers up my idea to be able to easily isolate a room using RCBOs as there will be a mixture of dimming and non-dimming circuits in a room. so maybe a single RCBO in the CU is the way to go so I can isolate the entire cabinet easily if needed and then individual RCBOs within the cabinet. time for a rethink I think.

Thank you! Great to know. I hadn’t considered this. I’ll take a look in to it and see what I can find. Thanks for the pointer.